Hello, I am sure this gets asked a lot, which is also a cause of concern for me as there is too many answers

I have been asked at work to get CEH, now they are not providing official courseware but they will reimburse the exam fee.

I don't feel like spending money on official course-ware as the matriel IMHO is written very poorly and is bloated.

This leaves me the option of self study from third party books and sites, and this is where I need a bit help.

I have gone through Kimberly Graves CEH book once, cover to cover. This book is more like topic index where one needs to research further on his own. Now what are my options? what all books do I need to supplement this.Shall I take v6 or v7 exam? Are there any books for v7 yet?

I would really appreciate if you could help me with this, especially people who have passed the exam this way.

The problem with not using official courseware is you may not cover all the material your need for the exam. If the official courseware seems bloated then perhaps the syllabus is equally bloated. I've not done the CEH exam but experience with other vendor exams teaches me that passing may involve learning all of the guff that's included that you are never likely to use.

You might look to getting a second hand copy since I doubt many people will want to keep what is essentially an exam study guide. Your hard earned cash might be better spent on some mock exams which I find very useful for exam preparation.

I just passed and used quite a bit of v6 study materials to assist me. From my understanding not that much has changed from the v6 testing to CEH v7. The main changes (according to our ECC Instructor) were removing old OS's such as 2000 and NT and adding Bluetooth and cellphones.